Search results for 'tag:Conversations tag:American accents' matching tags 'Conversations' and 'American accents'

Re: accents

SillyMe — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 10:32:36 GMT

"You knew your brother did a bad thing, did you?"

"You knew your brother did a bad thing, did you?"

Is the difference between those two an accent matter, or a pronunciation matter?

Neither. The intonation is the key. You have used an intonation stress to emphasise those words in the sentences. It has nothing to do with an accent. A lot of languages have the same mechanism for this purpose. People rarely speak in a monotonic way. They need an intonation to emphasise their ideas.

If your friends have a hard time understanding you when you start speaking with a "stupid" accent, then you need to analyze if you're really learning the target accent or not. It's not the accent's fault. How can it be?

Ok, Iâll say it again: I am not learning an accent. I just made sure that everyone could understand me. All people have different abilities in languages. I donât want to make anyone feel inconvenient when they are listening to me. My goal is to speak as accessible as possible for EVERYONE. I see accents as the main obstacle on this way.

Now, accents are part of a culture... be it in a country or in regions of that country. It may seem useless to you, but learning the american accent has given me the ability of having great conversations with many many americans. What about british people? They have no problem understanding americans, so I'm sure they'll have no problem understanding me... and I have spoken with british people, too. No communication issues.

I have never spoken to people whose first language was English and I donât think that Iâll ever do. English is the second language for most people. Why should I make my speech inaccessible for them? If I know that their level will not allow them to understand even a half of my speech, why should I? Language is a great tool to convey your ideas, why should I make it more complex and inaccessible?

LOL! This one made me smile! They are not speaking fast, it's that you are listening too slowly.

I have never said that I was a slow listener. But most people used to complain to me that speech of native speakers was hard to understand. Well, their (not natives) language might be poor, but anyway I am trying to sound easy to for them and for everyone in general.

To be understood by Americans... well, chances are you need to learn American English to understand Americans

I donât think so. I have never spoken to an American. I watch only dubbed films and like them that way. I donât listen to contemporary music, I like classical music. So, I think American English isnât present in my life.

The same applies for americans: how can I tell them that they don't know how to speak their own language?

They actually do. They are natives and they know it better. But unfortunately a spoken language is totally different from a written one to some extent of course. An accent is one of the main things that make this difference bigger. Why should one learn it, if nobody uses a spoken language (of course you have American friends, your situation might be a bit different or you live there, I donât know)? Most foreigners communicate using a written language. Thatâs why I want to speak slowly and without any reduction in my words.

Re: accents

Cvilla — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 21:29:32 GMT

SillyMe wrote:

There is no need to improve an accent. Sometimes some work on pronunciation is required, but no more than that. Everyone should just make sure that he could be understood and that is enough. I've seen a lot of people who thought they were fluent in the language enough to imitate a native pronunciation. Needless to say everyone had hard time understanding them. What is that for?
Perhaps you have never met a foreigner who thought that he could speak with an Irish accent. You even cannot imagine the sequence of sounds generated by this person.
I don't know how but you misunderstood me. I was talking about my friends who would have hard time understanding me if I started speaking with a stupid accent.
To conclude I want to say that accents are evil, because they imply various patterns of speech. Why should one learn for instance American accent? To be understood better by Americans, but it means that all other people will have hard time understanding this person. It seems senseless to me. Proper pronunciation is important but only to a sensible degree of course. Overdoing is just as bad as underdoing. Just make sure that you can be understood and be happy with that.

From my own experience, I can say that it's a very rewarding challenge. At least in my case americans say that I have no accent, and they have no trouble understanding everything I say.

Now, accents are part of a culture... be it in a country or in regions of that country. It may seem useless to you, but learning the american accent has given me the ability of having great conversations with many many americans. What about british people? They have no problem understanding americans, so I'm sure they'll have no problem understanding me... and I have spoken with british people, too. No communication issues.

If your friends have a hard time understanding you when you start speaking with a "stupid" accent, then you need to analyze if you're really learning the target accent or not. It's not the accent's fault. How can it be?

Now, if you are not a native English speaker (I assume you're not), I would like you to tell me the difference between these two sentences:

"You knew your brother did a bad thing, did you?"
"You knew your brother did a bad thing, did you?"

Is the difference between those two an accent matter, or a pronunciation matter? What does each question mean?

Things like that can't be found in languages like Spanish. So that is a matter of mastering an accent up to an "acceptable" level.

Re: accents

SillyMe — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:11:14 GMT

Cvilla wrote:
Believe it or not, accents play an important role in the social environment. In the Spanish speaking world, colombian people may have a hard time understanding us costaricans because of the way most of us pronounce the "r" and because of the accent itself. To us, some colombian accents are just terrible, while others are pleasant to the ear. And that's just an example; add Peru, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Bolivia, Ecuadro, Chile, Argentina, EspaÃ±a, Cuba, etc. Believe it or not, we can't understand each other that easily... and we all speak Spanish!

When I decided to learn the "standard" american accent (let's say an accent from a region that would make americans think I have no accent), I noticed how important it is. The better I am at "not having an accent", the easier a conversation with an american is. They feel they don't have to focus a lot in order to understand what I am saying... and I feel the same way when I speak with a foreigner in my native tongue. Why? Well, because you just "go with the flow", perhaps? Trying to learn an accent is not (and should not be) a humilating task. In fact, it's a real challenge.

Now, pronunciation is included in the accent package, and it's very important that we learn to pronounce words the right way. Just to give you an example, when I was working in a call center, once a coworker (a native american) and I listened to another coworker tell the customer, "Sir, you need to fu.ck us." The american turned to me and said, "Did you just hear what I think I heard?" And I was like, yes! So we told our friend to put the customer on hold, and then we explained to him what he just did; then we told him how to properly pronounce the word "focus." He meant, "Sir, you need to focus." Big difference, isn't it.

Maybe a bit of an accent won't hurt anybody; but when americans say, "You have an accent" what they usually mean is, "You don't speak like me and I'm having a hard time understanding." What's worse is having to ask people to repeat what they just said, cause the accent is like noise that doesn't let you get the words. This is not always the case, but accents definitely play a role in the communication process.

So if you wish, work on improving your English accent (be it american or british); just don't become obsessed by it.

I don't know much about Spanish. You know it better. May be proper pronunciation is important sometimes, but I think it depends on the place where you are living. There are no native speakers in my surrounding and everyone makes his/her own mistakes in speech. Moreover everyone tolerates them and nobody will point out mistakes made by others. Also a lot of my friends complain that they have a hard time understanding native speakers (they speak fast without a half of the letters in their words, another half sometimes is usually changed to totally different sounds. That is what an accent is about.). Why should I make their time even harder by speaking with a particular accent? Nothing can sound more terrible than a foreigner trying to speak with a stupid "native" accent. I think it is rude to say to someone that he/she has an accent especially by a native. It is much more polite to say "sorry" sometimes when you don't understand something.

Re: accents

Cvilla — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:42:30 GMT

Believe it or not, accents play an important role in the social environment. In the Spanish speaking world, colombian people may have a hard time understanding us costaricans because of the way most of us pronounce the "r" and because of the accent itself. To us, some colombian accents are just terrible, while others are pleasant to the ear. And that's just an example; add Peru, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Bolivia, Ecuadro, Chile, Argentina, EspaÃ±a, Cuba, etc. Believe it or not, we can't understand each other that easily... and we all speak Spanish!

When I decided to learn the "standard" american accent (let's say an accent from a region that would make americans think I have no accent), I noticed how important it is. The better I am at "not having an accent", the easier a conversation with an american is. They feel they don't have to focus a lot in order to understand what I am saying... and I feel the same way when I speak with a foreigner in my native tongue. Why? Well, because you just "go with the flow", perhaps? Trying to learn an accent is not (and should not be) a humilating task. In fact, it's a real challenge.

Now, pronunciation is included in the accent package, and it's very important that we learn to pronounce words the right way. Just to give you an example, when I was working in a call center, once a coworker (a native american) and I listened to another coworker tell the customer, "Sir, you need to fu.ck us." The american turned to me and said, "Did you just hear what I think I heard?" And I was like, yes! So we told our friend to put the customer on hold, and then we explained to him what he just did; then we told him how to properly pronounce the word "focus." He meant, "Sir, you need to focus." Big difference, isn't it.

Maybe a bit of an accent won't hurt anybody; but when americans say, "You have an accent" what they usually mean is, "You don't speak like me and I'm having a hard time understanding." What's worse is having to ask people to repeat what they just said, cause the accent is like noise that doesn't let you get the words. This is not always the case, but accents definitely play a role in the communication process.

So if you wish, work on improving your English accent (be it american or british); just don't become obsessed by it.

Can - Can't

Kooyeen — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:32:55 GMT

Hi,
would you notice the difference between the answers in this conversation?

- Can I move my home path to another partition without formatting?
- I think you can. / I think you can't.

I can distinguish between can and can't when can is not stressed (so it's "kun"), but I think there's no way to distinguish them when they are both stressed. I still remember when Ann Cook, in American Accent Training, said: "Now we are going to learn the difference between CAN and CAN." LOL
My tendency is to release the T a little when I want to avoid being ambiguous, so:
I think you can't. - slight t at the end.
No, you can't. - Unreleased t, glottal stop, call it what you want.
You can't see it. - My tongue doesn't even try to do any kind of T

What's your opinion? Thank you in advance

Re: listen to this awful American accent... and why?

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 19:21:53 GMT

Well this conversation is ancient, but maybe you get a tickler when someone replies adn will find this. The guy's accent is crap. I'm Canadian but I'm from Toronto where our accent is *almost* standard American (or what we called in the film business Mid-west Flat) and I can tell you a few specifically crappy things about it. I'll focus on the first couple of sentences, there is more than enough wrong with it. Also I agree with the commenter who said it sounded vaguely Russian.

"Standard American English. Hello my name is Paul and, the reason why I'm recording this video is to show you the way I talk. I will tell you a little story too."

Apart from the specific pronunciation problems, the rhythm is off. That's a very important part of language; when I taught Chinese students I would always try to teach them to emphasize the important words in a sentence (rather than treating all syllables equally). I have punctuated like he did (to my ear); he should have put a comma after "Hello", one after "Paul", no comma after "and", and a comma after "story". Failing to pause or pausing in inapprropriate places will give you away every time - the last sentence is particularly unnatural in this respect.

He also just makes some phrase choices that most Americans wouldn't, in my opinion. Americans would almost certainly introduce themselves first, for example, rather than stating the subject, and they would also tend to speak more directly or perhaps warmly to the audience (perhaps saying "So, let me tell you a little story.")

More specific:
-He puts an extra syllable in "Standard" so it's "Standered"
-His "i" sounds have too much "y" making them sound Slavic: "Mi-yee name yis Paul..." and also "vid-yee-oh" for "video."
-In that same phrase, the "is" has too much "ss"; Americans say "iz".
-When he says his own name the vowel sound is too close to "o" as in Pole. His name is Paul as in "Smoking Pall Malls in the Hall"
-When he says "talk" he almost gets it right. Standard American has ver soft "o" sounds that sound like "ah" in words like "hot" and "stop." the al in "talk" sounds like a soft "o" and in American more like "ah". The reason that word sounds so strange is because it is pretty close to correct in a sea of incorrect.

Good luck.

Re: British Accents

Ruttonjee — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 03:43:43 GMT

Hi there,

I am a non-native English learner. I often visit Randall's ESL Listening Cyber Lab http://www.esl-lab.com/ to practise listening and speaking skills. I find this website very useful in learning to new American English expressions. Can you suggest any similar websites but in British English because I want to learn new expressions used in Britain. By the way, are the expressions in the above websites also used in Britain? If yes, it is strange if I use them in conversation with British accents since I speak English with British accents instead of American accents.

simon

Re: How can I catch an american accent?

Patrick Bilson — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 17:02:00 GMT

I agree with the advice people gave you so far. Don't worry about not living in the US, I didn't either and I didn't have major problems getting an American accent. Just be patient and allow yourself enough time to change your speaking patterns. Losing an accent is not something you'll be able to do in just a few weeks.
A few more things that might help you:
-Try to speak English as much as possible. Only regular practice will make your foreign accent go away.
-If you don't know many (or any) American people, have conversations with yourself. Imagine that you're an actor learning his/her part.
-Think in English
-Buy a little tape recorder and tape yourself reading an article from a newspaper. Listen to your own recording an analyze what you need to work on

There's a ton of other stuff you can do to practice - be creative and just keep going!

Re: I WANT A SCOTTISH ACCENT

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:22:52 GMT

Hi all.

I really don't know how I got to this webpage so please forgive me

I'm a simple Slovak guy who have lived in Ireland and Northern Ireland. To be honest, I fell in love with those accents. The Cork's accent is my favourite 'cause I spend the longest time over there. I visited Belfast and Derry and have caught some of these accents as well. In my opinion, they sound much better than american or australian accents.. (I'm a student of American college in Slovakia.. After three years, believe or not, I just hate American accent )

I'd loved to learn Belfast accent and be able to use it in a conversation..

There is one more movie where you can listen to pure Scottish accent. Its name is Dog Soldiers.. The movie is crap but Scottish accent is cool, much better than that in Braveheart.

Slan Abhaile!

Re: I want to ask you a question about toefl listenning exam

Savvysavz — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 17:41:39 GMT

Hi Fenerbahceli

During your TOEFL exam, you are given only ONE chance to listen to a conversation. Whether you grasp the conversation or not, you will have to answer the question which comes in the next screen. If you're doing the TOEFL CBT (Computer based test), it is important that you get the first few answers right for every section in order to keep up with a good score.

The best way to get a good score in the listening section is simply to keep practising your listening skills ( American accent). Keep practising a lot because the listening section comes first in your TOEFL exam. You will find various books (Princeton Review, Kaplan etc...) with CDs in almost any local bookstore.

Tips:

1)ETS allows you to adjust the volume at any time during the Listening section. Adjust the volume of the speakers at the beggining of the test itself. Dont waste time adjusting the volume during the conversations as you can be sure to lose hold of the conversation if you do so.

2)During every conversation , the computer will show attractive images of students/professors or some landscape in an American University. Dont keep looking at these images ( the still ones)as they are only distractors. Instead concentrate on the conversation. There are some questions that demand you to look at an image, but it is never in the short conversation.

3) It's important to learn American idioms to sometimes understand the meaning of the conversation.

Savvy